We find things when we work. Behind walls, under floors, in
dark...
We find things when we work. Behind walls, under floors, in
dark bays, in the dirt below the house. Marbles, green plastic soldiers,
license plates, old tools. Once, an ice skate, childsize, laces tied in a neat
bow. Digging in the dirt below the basement in the house we’re working on, we
found glass bottles, a bent spoon, a shallow offwhite saucer, a rusted vice.
Who deposited this collection here, any why? No answers. I pocketed one bottle.
It’s simple, small, and green. “Demo guys found an active grenade from World
War II in the ceiling of the place we’re working on in JP on Friday,” said the
electrician this morning. “Bomb squad had to get called in. If it had fallen on
the floor? Boom.” It’s an unspoken rule that we leave the treasures we find for
the people who own the house. Of course I have treasuremap hopes, that one day,
peeling back a floorboard, we’ll find rubies, a sack of cash. And beyond that,
this powerful, driving sense that if you keep digging, keep getting deeper and
darker and wetter and weirder, something important will be unearthed. Something
big, something altogether altering, something explosive. Maybe. And maybe
there’s nothing but more darkness, a depthlessness that can swallow you right
up. I’ve shoveled so much recently, dug
in. It’s tiring. It’s dark down there and there’s no sign yet of a bottom.
